Channeling Love.
Meera, just a little wing singing to her Krishna, flying only towards Him with no care of anything else, grows in physical and spiritual beauty. She is not a tantrum teenager – she has no need to be. The light of her grandfather’s eye and one with such force of will, she is allowed to go and do as she pleases. She grows wild, but strong, a warrior skilled in martial art and the control and reflexes of a dancer. Combined with the lack of an authoritative mother-figure and the encouragement of a warrior grandfather, she is not inhibited, neither in her love for her Krishna nor in her artistic temperament. Imagine, then, how her world should have been torn apart at the death of her grandfather! Imagine how shattered and bereft she should have been! Or should she…
Meera, truly devoted to Krishna, could not but acquire some of His traits. She transcended maya and immersed herself in a different world. This is not to say she lacked love. But if she could love Krishna as though he were there with her at all times, why could she not love her grandfather in the same way? In her world, the world in which she lived as her Krishna’s servant, where she danced and sang and played with Krishna, her grandfather too existed now.
STOP.
It would ring false to say she was some sort of yogini at the young age of 19. Imagine how you were at 19. I can still remember how I was. Not a joy to be with. Meera was whiny, she cried, she riled – she ranted and raved. But, when you or I rant and rave all of the people around us, poor dears, are left upset. When Meera ranted and raved it poured forth as an emotional torrent of music that everyone hears and identifies with, and receives succor from.
That’s the trait of a bardess – the ability to project, through art, whatever emotion the listener needs to feel and then channel it. Happiness? Enthusiasm? Joie de vivre? She will amplify it. Despondence? Anger? Insanity? Vulnerability? Bitterness? All of that she feels too… but at the end of the song is a calm, serene, bliss. As a lover scorned, refusing to listen to reason, scorching the messenger with her piercing glance, hair in a disarray, eyes wide and bloodshot, chest heaving with agitated hostility is magically hushed by the sweet kiss of a smiling, loving sweetheart.
In the end, corny or not, disgustingly sweet or leaving an odd aftertaste, the reality is, that kind of love – that feeling that Meera had for Krishna – was imbued in the words she wrote and even more magically, for want of a better word, it permeates still, into the minds, hearts and souls of those who listen or read her words.
And we want it to. We ask it to. Please, come sweet love. Come into my parlor…
“Mhare Ghar Aao, Pritam Pyaara”
Meera, truly devoted to Krishna, could not but acquire some of His traits. She transcended maya and immersed herself in a different world. This is not to say she lacked love. But if she could love Krishna as though he were there with her at all times, why could she not love her grandfather in the same way? In her world, the world in which she lived as her Krishna’s servant, where she danced and sang and played with Krishna, her grandfather too existed now.
STOP.
It would ring false to say she was some sort of yogini at the young age of 19. Imagine how you were at 19. I can still remember how I was. Not a joy to be with. Meera was whiny, she cried, she riled – she ranted and raved. But, when you or I rant and rave all of the people around us, poor dears, are left upset. When Meera ranted and raved it poured forth as an emotional torrent of music that everyone hears and identifies with, and receives succor from.
That’s the trait of a bardess – the ability to project, through art, whatever emotion the listener needs to feel and then channel it. Happiness? Enthusiasm? Joie de vivre? She will amplify it. Despondence? Anger? Insanity? Vulnerability? Bitterness? All of that she feels too… but at the end of the song is a calm, serene, bliss. As a lover scorned, refusing to listen to reason, scorching the messenger with her piercing glance, hair in a disarray, eyes wide and bloodshot, chest heaving with agitated hostility is magically hushed by the sweet kiss of a smiling, loving sweetheart.
In the end, corny or not, disgustingly sweet or leaving an odd aftertaste, the reality is, that kind of love – that feeling that Meera had for Krishna – was imbued in the words she wrote and even more magically, for want of a better word, it permeates still, into the minds, hearts and souls of those who listen or read her words.
And we want it to. We ask it to. Please, come sweet love. Come into my parlor…
“Mhare Ghar Aao, Pritam Pyaara”
posted by crazybard at 11:43 AM
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